Tag Archives: Garth Ennis

The video deserves further analysis. The first thing anyone notices about little Cherry is that she’s positively chubby. And not in that over-voluptuous, massive-titted way that most cartoonists represent “heavy, sexy” girls. Cherry’s got soft arms, fat knees, a wide and mobile rump, but most unusually, a round belly. Try finding that in idealized female portrayals elsewhere–it’s not easy.

C.K.: When I say awful things, I think it’s clear to the audience that I just stumbled into a terrible part of my brain. It’s just where my brain goes first. The difference is that I said it out loud. That’s all. It’s just a big excuse to say awful things. But people know that. They intrinsically trust somebody: He’s just fucking around. People get tired of processing life in a linear way. When you watch my show or my stand-up, you’re opening the top button on your coat and sitting back, but with your brain. When I say vulgar things, it’s usually not to be mean or sexually charged. It’s just a dumb lashing-out in a direction that’s inappropriate.

Bullshit ain’t about lying…Like bullshit, bollocks is subtle. It is used as a declaration of falsehood, but it’s also, more commonly, used as to denote poor quality, or, like bullshit, highlight truth rejecting nonsense, or to punctuate a fuck-up.

This is maybe my favorite page in comic book history. Or at the very least, the one that has had the most emotional impact on me as a reader. The punch from this single page, single panel is profound, grave, and possibly one of the few times we are ever able to feel for Frank or see him as a human being. Or of what is left of one. Because quite frankly he isn’t one. He hasn’t been one for some time. And Ennis is smart to note that his family’s death isn’t what made him who he is, it was always war itself.

And War is God.

The abyss of the background is intense. Frank’s reality is impenetrable blackness. Nothingness. Even as he sits in this working-stiff diner, cutting his steak, the world around him is an abyss. His everyday is the infinite nothing that surrounds him. There is no enjoyment here. He eats his meal because it is there, easy and low-key. Nothing in his life is enjoyed. It can’t be. And after witnessing the desecration of his family’s grave, the illusion of cold pounding rain on his body infiltrates the void that is his life. The bleakness of his reality is worsened, made even more absolute, soul breaking, and further separating him from the reality of the people around him. When it rains, it rains alone on him. Imagine your ruined life ruined even further. When every day is your lowest, you realize you can be broken further.

Rain or maybe claw marks – the scratching of a long buried thought or memory clawing at the everything/nothing that is your life with long, violent streaks down the the panel. The art on page becomes literal narrative rain, narrative scaring, narrative misery.

The event is so powerful that the diegetic representation of the world of the comic, the background of both the diner and the page itself, is forever scarred by the previous pages, never to return to their simple blackness. The comic itself, the story, feels what is happening within, it becomes aware in a way that text on paper can never be, changing the world around the character for the reader.

First of all, I’ll very openly admit a problem with this blog post. I’ve not read the entire Crossed series, or any of the Crossed: Family Values. So, this may prove problematic with what I’m going to be discussing, but I have a firm grasp on the body of Garth Ennis’s work, and have read most of the initial series.

Every now and again I have the pleasure of discussing comics with a colleague of mine, a PhD student in a different department on my campus, and inevitably our discussions always come back to the work of Garth Ennis. Now, perhaps this is because we are both big fans of his work, or perhaps it is because when it comes to the work of Garth Ennis, there is always a lot to say. Even more so to this point, we both agree that many people “get him wrong” when discussing his work. It is always a delightful joy when I see people “get it,” one of which that comes to mind is how The Boys was nominated for a GLAAD award. Reading that particular series with a less than critical eye, this may come to a huge surprise, but again, they get it. Ennis is easily misinterpreted, and that is why reading his comics is damn fun.

Perhaps this post is the result of reading the blog Bleeding Cool, but they have been doing a great job at keeping me up to date in regard to comic writing. This is something I need to be more active in, since I consider this to be my area of focus. Regardless of reason, this first post on my oft-forgotten blog can be blamed on the fact that Bleeding Cool is forcing me to pay attention, and that they have, in a sense, stepped up the game of comic writing. So, to strive even further off topic from the title of this post, I’d like to quote Jesse Thorn, “the remarkable has always had some advantages over say, the dependable, but internet communication changes the equation dramatically, [source]” and hope I can embody that mantra with the continued efforts of this blog.